Yep, another year has gone by and the RIP V challenge is here again! I already had a stack of books piled high in anticipation of this creepy book event hosted by Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings and I am so excited to share my potential reads with all of you.

I would love to get to all of these books over the next two months, but will only be committing myself to reading two of them for the challenge (which is what is so great about Carl’s reading challenges – no pressure – read one book or a whole stack – it’s up to you)!!

Some of these books have been on my TBR list for awhile. I’m looking forward to reading Alan Bradley’s newest Flavia de Luce Mystery titled The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (I loved his first book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie which I read based on Carl’s recommendation during RIP last year). I then grabbed a copy of the mystery A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch recently, which is also part of a book series. I won a copy of The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb from a book blog a few months ago, read good things about Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn online and picked up John Connelly’s book The Gates at my local library. Lastly, I would LOVE to set aside time to read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which I read a few years back and thoroughly enjoyed.

I’ve planned a trip with some girlfriends to Dublin Ireland this October and might even bring one of these along for the trip. Unless of course you guys could recommend a good Irish ghost story for me to read!

RIP V!! Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

But something is strange about Ashecliffe and as Teddy and Chuck delve deeper into the disappearance of Rachel, they realize that there are much more devious things going on on Shutter Island. With a hurricane bearing down on the island, things only get more confusing. It turns out that on Shutter Island all is not quite what it seems. How could have Rachel escaped a locked prison cell? When Rachel all of a sudden reappears you realize that the mystery of Shutter Island has only just begun. Has Teddy come to the the island with his own agenda? And will Teddy and Chuck make it off the island in one piece?

Like the wind from the hurricane that has hit the island, Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane will throw you around until you no longer know which way is up. Lehane’s writing grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the very end. Shutter Island is one of those books you just can’t put down and I read it in a few short days, always trying to stay one step ahead of the author to figure out what was really going on. But just when you think you know what is going to happen, Lehane throws in another plot twist that literally blows your mind. I was blindsided a few times while reading the book and really enjoyed the twists and turns of the story. Shutter Island is a great psycological thriller.

Once finishing the book, I got a copy of the movie which is directed by Martin Scorsese. You can see the trailer below.

I was impressed by how closely the movie followed the story in the book and also thought that it was well cast. I would recommend reading the book then watching the movie, as I think they both were well worth my time.

Shutter Island (book & movie) Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Anyway, The Passage is about end of the world and death row inmates injected with yucky stuff  (in the hopes of creating a super-human army) thanks to the US Military. Unfortunately, it has turned them into glowing, crazy vampire creatures that play tricks with your mind. Then they escape, wreaking havoc throughout the world. With the exception of one young girl named Amy, who was also one of the ”patients” that the US Military was messing with, the vampires (or virals as they are called) have pretty much taken over the world. Fast forward 90 plus years and you then meet the people of The Colony, ancestors of those who survived, who have to turn on flood lights each night to keep the creepy guys away so they don’t turn everyone into bloodsucking maniacs. Then Amy shows up, only she is like a hundred years old but looks like she is in her mid-teens. With the looming disaster (batteries are about to go dead, plunging those unlucky people into darkness) Amy and a bunch of them have only one hope – to go out into the world to figure out what is really happening.

Well, I liked The Passage, but didn’t love it. I’ll start with the most glaring problem – the fact that there were many slow spots. A little more editing would have done the story good, because I felt that there was a lot of talk that was repetitive. If I had to read another line about about which bunker they found to stay in, what canned food they were going to eat, or which vehicle would get them where they were going I think I would have screamed. Talk about dragging the story on. I only hope that the next two books (yep, it’s a trilogy) aren’t quite as long winded. 

Even though the story didn’t have me stockpiling food like that other “end of the world” book I read this year (Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer -read my review here) I understand how The Passage totally creepy some readers out.

Having said that, I must admit that Cronin has a way with words. There were a few passages that I highlighted as I read. This one I especially liked:

Though most of the sisters prayed in the little chapel behind the kitchen, and Lacey did this too, she reserved her most earnest, searching prayers for this time alone in her room, not even kneeling but sitting at her desk or on the corner of her narrow bed. She’d put her hands in her lap, close her eyes, and send her mind out as far as she could – since childhood, she had imagined it as a kite on a string, lifting higher as she let the line out – and wait to see what happened. Now, sitting on the bed, she sent the kite as high as she dared, the imaginary ball of string growing smaller in her hand, the kite itself just a speck of color far above her head, but all she felt was the wind of heaven pushing upon it, a force of great power against a things so small.

Also, the story is certainly imaginative  and much more than the typical vampire novel that has taken over the book publishing world today. These are creatures that aren’t the lovey-dovey Cullen clan and they are not supposed to be. It’s a vampire book with what you would actually think vampires would truly be like, if they existed at all. Also, I really liked most of the characters and did begin to care about them as the story went on. I just wish that the author decided to do it with a few less words.

Giveaway Details!

Think you’d like The Passage more than I did? Since I bought the hardcover to bring on vacation with me, but then go a Nook and decided to download it onto that, I now have a big, unread, brand-spanking new hardcover of The Passage to giveaway. All you need to do is leave a comment on this post, with a valid e-mail address, by Noon EST time on August 22nd. For a second entry just tweet about this giveaway on Twitter (Don’t miss out! @SWrittenWord is giving away a hardcover copy of The Passage http://www.stephanieswrittenword.com/?p=2667). I will e-mail the winner directly. Good luck!!

The Passage (review & giveaway) Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Syrie James, author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen and The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte is out with a new book this month called Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker and let me tell you, it is a thrill ride from start to finish!

Mina Murray is a young girl soon to be wed to childhood friend Jonathan Harker. While Jonathan is away on business in Transylvania, Mina is spending the summer with her best friend Lucy in the coastal town of Whitby, England. It has been awhile since Mina has heard from Jonathan and is worried that he will be delayed in coming home. But Mina finds herself distracted when she meets an attractive and  mysterious foreigner who recently arrived. At the same time, Lucy starts to sleep-walk and becomes quite ill. Before she knows it, Mina’s life goes topsy-turvy. There is talk of vampires in England and when Mina finds out the shocking truth about Jonathan’s delay and Lucy’s illness she realizes that there is more to the mysterious charismatic stranger than meets the eye.

Soon Mina is torn between her good and sweet Jonathan and the passionate, sexy mystery man who is really Count Dracula. When Jonathan, along with a group of men, decide that it is time to rid the world of Dracula once and for all, Mina has a terrible choice to make. Does she stay true to Jonathan or will she let her passionate feelings for Dracula conquer all.

Told from Mina’s perspective, Dracula, My Love is a fantastic read! James has written an excitingly dark tale with a romantic twist that is a page turner from start to finish. The author has given Dracula something that is missing in earlier novels – a heart and soul. I remember reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula years ago and realized after reading this new book that James has really added to the original story, giving it new life and an entirely fresh perspective. There was even a twist at the very end which I didn’t see coming but gave the story an satisfying conclusion. Like a vampire draining his latest victim, I sucked down every juicy detail of Dracula, My Love. I really enjoyed this novel and would highly recommend it.

Giveaway & Tweet-up Details!

TLC Book Tours has generously provided me with a copy of Dracula, My Love to giveaway! All you need to do is leave a comment (with a valid e-mail address) on this post. I will pick a winner from the first thirty comments I receive! Only US/Canada entries please (and no P.O. Boxes). Easy, right?

And if you don’t win the book from my blog (and would love to get to chat with the author) then check out the Vampire Lit Tweet-Up and Book Giveaway on August 13th starting at 1 pm PST/4 pm EST time on Twitter for a bunch more chances to win this novel (just make sure to use the hashtag #TLCbookchat to join in on the fun)!

For more information about the author and her new novel, check out her Website, find her on Facebook or check out her YouTube stuff! You can also read an excerp of Dracula, My Love HERE.

Follow the tour for Dracula, My Love:

Monday, August 2nd:  LoveVampires

Monday, August 2nd:  Tynga’s Reviews

Tuesday, August 3rd:  All Things Urban Fantasy

Tuesday, August 3rd:  Pirate Penguin’s Reads

Wednesday, August 4th:  Parajunkee

Wednesday, August 4th:  Hist-Fic Chick

Thursday, August 5th:  Book Junkie

Thursday, August 5th:  Peeking Between the Pages

Friday, August 6th:  Mindful Musings

Monday, August 9th:  Scandalous Women

Monday, August 9th:  Passages to the Past

Tuesday, August 10th:  Historical-Fiction.com

Tuesday, August 10th:  Stiletto Storytime

Wednesday, August 11th:  Dark Faerie Tales

Thursday, August 12th:  Lovin’ Me Some Romance

Dracula, My Love (review, giveaway & tweet-up) Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

On the eve of the first world war, a little girl is found abandoned on a ship to Australia. A mysterious woman called the Authoress had promised to look after her – but the Authoress has disappeared without a trace.

A terrible secret… 

On the night of her twenty-first birthday, Nell O’Connor learns a secret that will change her life forever. Decades later, she embarks upon a search for the truth that leads her to the windswept Cornish coast and the strange and beautiful Blackhurst Manor, once owned by the aristocratic Mountrachet family.

A mysterious inheritance…

On Nell’s death, her grand-daughter, Cassandra, comes into an unexpected inheritance. Cliff Cottage and its forgotten garden are notorious amongst the Cornish locals for the secrets they hold – secrets about the doomed Mountrachet family and their ward Eliza Makepeace, a writer of dark Victorian fairytales. It is here that Cassandra will finally uncover the truth about the family, and solve the century-old mystery of a little girl lost.

The Forgotten Garden was a book that I read with my book club. We all really enjoyed the novel and had a very good discussion about it at the meeting. At over five hundred detailed pages, The Forgotten Garden was not a book that you could easily breeze through. In fact, it took me quite a while to get through the novel as I really wanted to pay attention carefully to the storyline. Morton so expertly spins multiple plot lines throughout the story and if I had rushed through the novel I might have missed some important details.

With a completely satisfying ending,  The Forgotten Garden was a thoroughly enjoyable read and perfect for book club discussions. I’ve never read her first book The House at Riverton but plan on grabbing a copy of it soon. I am also looking forward to reading Morton’s new book, The Distant Hours, which will be released later this year.

For more in-depth reviews, check out what Violet Crush and Discussing Books had to say about The Forgotten Garden.

The Forgotten Garden (mini-review) Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

I did it! I finally sat down and read To Kill a Mockingbird and found myself thoroughly immersed in the world of Scout, Jem, Atticus and the many varied characters within the book. Instead of writing a “review” because there must be thousands of reviews written about this American classic already (and I always feel quite underqualified to actually review a classic) I’ve decided to just write down some of my thoughts about To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM) for all of you (WARNING – may contain spoilers in this semi-review)!

What surprised me the most about TKAM?

I really had very little to go on when I opened the first page. I knew the book was about racism and prejudice, but that was all the information I had. So I was kind of surprised that the book wasn’t this epic story that I’ve sometimes associated with a classic. Instead of spanning generations or a lifetime, TKAM focuses on just a few years in the life of Scout and her older brother Jem. It was really a very simple, quiet book. Having said that, Harper Lee didn’t have to write this epic drama to get her point across. It was a very powerful book, all neatly packed in just over three hundred pages.

What did I love best about TKAM?

I have to say I really enjoyed the humor sprinkled throughout the novel. Scout of course had some of the best lines and I particularly loved it when she started swearing, in the hopes that her father would take her out of school:

“Aw, that’s a damn story,” I (Scout) said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Atticus said, “Don’t pay any attention to her, Jack. She’s trying you out. Cal says she’s been cussing fluently for a week, now.”
Uncle Jack raised his eyebrows and said nothing. I was proceeding on the dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words, that if Atticus discovered I had picked them up at school he wouldn’t make me go. But at supper that evening when I asked him to pass the damn ham, please, Uncle Jack pointed at me. “See me afterwards, young lady,” he said

Who was my favorite character?

I have to say Scout because I loved that she was spunky, intelligent and wise beyond her years.

What was my best discovery about TKAM?

I really loved how the author tied in the title of the book to the entire story. When Scout says to her father “Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?” a few pages short of the end of the story is really a beautiful moment. I also felt the theme of “putting yourself in another man’s shoes” was a powerful one. At the end of the book there is a very scene where Scout is looking at her street from Boo Radley’s front porch and realizes that her father’s advice to always look at a situation from another person’s perspective is spot on. It’s given me a lot to think about since finishing the book.

What is my biggest regret when it comes to TKAM?

Probably the fact that unlike a lot of Americans, I didn’t have the opportunity to read TKAM while young and in school. I would love to have read and studied TKAM with my peers at a young age.  Check out this guest post over at She Is Too Fond Of Books to see how one teacher has come up with a very creative and interactive way to teach teenagers directly from the pages of TKAM. How awesome and interesting would that assignment be? But unfortunately I didn’t read this book as a teenager and wish that I had, not only to have been able to learn about TKAM while still a kid, but to have been able to re-read it as an adult to see how or if my perceptions of TKAM changed with time.  

Check out this website that celebrates the 50th Anniversary of TKAM (plus you can listen to Sissy Spacek’s audio recording of the book). Thank you Harper Collins for sending me this book for me to read and review!

Lastly, I found this HILARIOUS video put together by Cat over at Beyond Books which includes her thoughts on the first eight chapters of TKAM.

Thank you Cat for allowing me to share your video on my blog (make sure you all watch the video until the end – it’s worth it)!!  I hope Cat that you continue with the video series as you read TKAM (and no, the Mockingbird is not named Frank)!

To Kill a Mockingbird (a sort-of-review) Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

“Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible
to like the heroine of Mansfield Park”:
How do you solve a problem like Fanny Price?

I doubt there’s another Austen heroine – even another Austen character – who’s inspired more discussion, disagreement and debate down the years than Fanny Price. There was a recent online debate on this very subject entitled ‘Fanny Price, love her or loathe her?, and that pretty much sums up the state of play when it comes to the central character of Mansfield Park.  Fanny fans admire her unstinting virtue, her gentleness, and her self-effacing concern for others; while the anti-Fanny faction find the very fact that she’s so self-effacing overpoweringly irritating, and want her to get off the sofa and take some control of her own destiny.

Now obviously there was only so much control a genteel unmarried young woman – and especially a poor one – could actually take in the first half of the 19^thcentury. She couldn’t travel alone, earn her own living (other than as a governess), or make any number of other decisions we now take for granted, including – in many cases – deciding who to marry. To that extent we can sympathise with Fanny, but Elizabeth Bennet faces many of the same challenges, without becoming so deplorably feeble and passive. And even Jane Austen’s mother was said to find Fanny ‘insipid’, so it isn’t entirely a modern prejudice. Indeed, in some ways we’re more equipped to understand Fanny now, than her contemporaries were. As Carol Shields puts it, “That the pattern of abuse [in her childhood] has created a being as repressed as Fanny is not in the least surprising. The modern reader understands precisely why Fanny is Fanny. Hers is a case of the Cinderella syndrome, of the prisoner’s self-protective strategy. The problem is: How can we love her?” 

How indeed.

I first read Mansfield Parkfor my school-leaving exams, and even then I was struck by the contrast between Fanny and more feisty Austen heroines, and wondered why it was she chose to make Fanny the heroine of the book, when there seemed to be a far more obvious candidate in Mary Crawford. I’ve always seen Mary something of a cross between Elizabeth Bennet and Emma – as clever as the one, and as rich as the other. But the fact that Fanny is the heroine of Mansfield Park goes to the heart of what Austen is trying to do with this book. Even when she was still writing it, she acknowledged that it was “not half so entertaining” as Pride & Prejudice, which she famously referred to as “rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense.”

Well, we certainly get our ration of ‘sense’ in Mansfield Park, much of it gleaned either from Fanny’s thoughts, or from Edmund’s speeches. Indeed, I’ve often thought that Edmund is at the root of many of the problems readers have with the novel – we tend to blame Fanny for the book’s rather ponderous tone, but Edmund is just as responsible for that as she is. Not only has he “formed her mind” so more often than not she “think[s] like him”, but we also have to sit through rather too much of Edmund’s self-righteous pontificating about other people behind their backs. So while Mansfield Parkdoes undeniably offer us the same Austen ‘boy meets girl’ plot, the boy and girl in question are much harder to like than in the other novels. The critic Kingsley Amis didn’t mince his words, not merely calling both of them “morally detestable”, but making the hilariously waspish observation that to “invite Mr and Mrs Edmund Bertram round for the evening would not be lightly undertaken.”

Amis was also responsible for perhaps the single most infamous condemnation of Fanny Price, calling her “a monster of complacency and pride, who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel”. This quote was one of my original inspirations for Murder at Mansfield Park: whether or not you agree with it as a judgment on Austen’s Fanny, it describes my own to perfection. My Fanny uses that ‘cloak’ of demure modesty to disguise her selfish scheming, and get exactly what she wants. But despite the dramatic changes I made in her character, I found it quite revealing that I was still able to use quite a bit of what the original Fanny actually says.

So what of Mary Crawford? I’m not alone in feeling Austen loads the dice against Mary, and wrenches the natural trajectory of the plot to achieve the ending she has clearly decided on at the outset. All the same, you do get the distinct sense towards the end that the plot is getting away from her, and the characters are assuming lives of their own (a strange sensation for a writer, this, but one I can confirm does actually happen). One reason for this is that Austen gives the feeble Fanny a rival who’s funny, lively, and confident, and who both the reader and Edmund are in danger of finding irresistible. And even though Austen ladles on more and more evidence of Mary’s supposed shallowness (to the extent of making her use a pun so obscene it’s still shocking, even now), she still ends up having to resort to the literary equivalent of a sledgehammer to force Edmund and Mary apart once and for all.

The scandalous and frankly improbable elopement between Henry and the married Maria is a dirty trick, and Austen knows it. You can see this first in her rather strident refusal to tell us how long, precisely, it takes for Edmund to stop thinking of Fanny as “my only sister”, and start thinking of her as a potential wife. But this passage is just as revealing in its way: “Would [Henry] have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward—and a reward very voluntarily bestowed—within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.” In other words – ‘if I’d left them all alone, this is what would have happened.’ It’s like the ghost of another ending to Mansfield Park, and it was another of the inspirations for my own book. For years I’ve thought there was another novel buried in there – a novel Austen could have written, and decided not to. A much lighter, sharper and more playful novel, with Mary as its heroine, and that’s what I’ve tried to write.

In fact, the origins of my own take on Austen’s novel go back at least ten years. The first book I tried to get published was a modern-day mystery that revolved round the discovery of the manuscript of an early version of Mansfield Park. This was called Improvements and (in my story) was supposedly written in the 1790s, after the first versions of Sense & Sensibility and Pride & Prejudice, but before either of those were published. In Improvements Mary was indeed the heroine and Fanny her bête noire. That novel included some pastiche Austen text too, and that’s when I got a taste for it. I also had a lot of fun looking for a plausible reason why Austen might have started with Mary as the heroine, and then later changed her mind, but I found a very interesting one in Jane Austen’s own life.

There one particular episode in her history which remains shadowy – not least because her sister Cassandra burned all the letters that referred to it. In the summer of 1801 Austen met and supposedly fell in love with a young clergyman while on holiday in Sidmouth. Three weeks later he told her he had to go away, and the next they heard he was dead.  That much is well-known, and you can read an interesting fictional take on it in Jane Gardam’s short story, The Sidmouth Letters, and it’s also covered in biographies like David Nokes’ excellent Jane Austen: A Life. But in my novel I didn’t have to stick to the facts  – slight as they are – which gave me the freedom to suggest a version of events in which Austen had lost her clergyman’s heart even before he died, and he had proposed instead to a livelier, richer rival who made her look dull and drab by comparison. My theory, then, was that making Fanny her heroine was Austen’s revenge on the ‘Mary Crawfords’ of the world, and she’d tried to right the wrong done to her in life, in the text of her novel. It’s all pure speculation, of course, but as in Mansfield Park, a game of ‘speculation’ can often be “very entertaining indeed.”

GIVEAWAY DETAILS!

Want a copy of Murder at Mansfield Park? All you have to do is leave a comment with a valid e-mail on this post by 12 noon EST on July 26th for a chance to win! For an additional entry, tweet this giveaway (Win a copy of  Murder at Mansfield Park  by Lynn Shepherd over at @SWrittenWord  http://tinyurl.com/36kpzzo). Please note that this giveaway is open to US or Canadian residents only. I will e-mail the winner on Tuesday, July 27th.

Murder at Mansfield Park author guest post & giveaway! Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Frank Mackey, who we first met as Cassie’s boss in The Likeness, is the star of Tana French’s third book. Frank is the divorced father of nine year old Holly. He is also head of Undercover for the Dublin police. With the exception of his sister Jackie, Frank hasn’t been in contact with any of his family and friends from his old stomping grounds at Faithful Place for over twenty years. That is all about to change when Frank receives a frantic call from Jackie that something is wrong at the old homestead. Apparently in the abandoned building up the street an old suitcase has been found buried in the walls. The suitcase belonged to Rosie Daley, who was Frank’s first love. Frank and Rosie had agreed all those years ago to run away to London together, but while waiting for her that long ago evening Rosie never showed up. Frank, who assumed this was Rosie’s way of breaking up with him, decided to take off and the next day both he and Rosie were gone. Everyone had assumed they ran off together, but Frank went on with his life and Rosie was never heard from again.

After Frank goes home to his dysfunctional family to check out the suitcase (bringing up some bad memories of the long ago rages of his alcoholic father, his crazy mother and four siblings) he does some snooping around. But the people of Faithful Place aren’t too happy to see Frank return. Having been gone for so long, and then become a cop no less, Frank finds himself between a rock and a hard place. How can he find out what really happened to Rosie so many years ago if no one wants to talk? And is Frank himself ready for what he is about to discover?

Again, Faithful Place is another winner from the author Tana French. French seems to bring the psychological thriller to a whole new level with each new book. Faithful Place is a really good read and the character of Frank is one of the authors most complex to date.  Crass, pessimistic, tough and harboring deep scars from his violent upbringing, Frank is a multi-layered character that is the perfect fit for this book.  The book is definitely a who-done-it, but more importantly it is a story about Frank’s mental state, which takes a battering while trying to crack the case. I came to love the character of Frank as I read the book, not necessarily because he is such a great guy (although he has one of those sense of humors that cracks me up) but for the simple fact that he is so real. I mentioned in my review of The Likeness earlier this year that French creates characters that are almost real enough to touch and Frank is as real as you can get. All in all it was another winner from Tana French!!

If you are interested, you can see my review of The Likeness here and In the Woods here.  Thank you Penguin for sending me an ARC copy of Faithful Place for review.              

Cool author event!

Penguin Books invites you to join the celebrated mystery author, Tana French, for a chat at the Penguin Water Cooler on Tuesday, July 20th at 1:30 PM ET, hosted here on the Penguin USA website! Don’t miss this opportunity to chat with Tana on the heels of the publication of her hotly anticipated third novel, Faithful Place

Faithful Place & talk to the author! Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Courtney @ Stiletto Storytime

Courtney has won a signed copy of Lindsay Eland’s Scones and Sensibility! If you missed the wonderful guest post written by Lindsay (all about Austen and desserts) you can read it here.

If you weren’t the lucky winner of Scones and Sensibility don’t despair! Next week we will be having another Austen-ish giveaway for a copy of a brand new book so stay tuned!!

Even though the deadline to join the challenge is tomorrow, if you are really desperate to join in and just a little late please e-mail me at wordblog(at)optonline(dot)net and I’ll see about trying to squeeze you in!

Our first Everything Austen II winner! Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

But there was one type of genre I was afraid to tackle – the classics. I don’t know whether I thought I wasn’t smart enough to read classic literature or if I wouldn’t “get” it, but I was deathly afraid of even attempting a classic book.

I have to thank Oprah’s Book Club for encouraging me to give it a try (I know *eyes rolling* but to be honest if it wasn’t for her I don’t know that I would have picked up my very first classic, East of Eden by John Steinbeck). I really enjoyed East of Eden and realized that there were a world of books, ones that are beloved by millions, that I should make the time to read. Shortly thereafter I devoured a copy of my mom’s all time favorite book Little Women, met Hazel in Watership Down, learned about China in The Good Earth, recovered from surgery with Elizabeth and Darcy as my companions and delved into some Bronte with Jane Eyre.

There is one book though that I haven’t read yet, that I have been meaning to for a very long time. There is a big celebration going on to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, so I’ve decided to join in on the fun. In a couple days (right after finishing my current read) I plan on reading, for the first time ever, this true American classic.

So tell me, have you read To Kill a Mockingbird? Is there one classic book that you’ve always meant to read but haven’t done so yet?

By the way, if you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird and would like to, check out Heather’s blog – she is hosting a great giveaway of the 50th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird along with a very special book companion, Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celeberation of 50 Years of To Kill a Mockingbird!

Sunday Salon 7.11.10 – the classic I haven’t read yet Originally published by Stephanie of Stephanie's Written Word. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.